B y S t e p h e n K i e s l i ng
Dolls by Crystal Star
Decades of research worldwide suggest that cultures evolve in stages, a hierarchy
like nesting Russian dolls elegantly described in the eight colors of Spiral
Dynamics — and tested against apartheid. Surprisingly, the
most dangerous stage may not be toward the bottom where people fight for
survival, feudal power, and market share. Instead, it may be where we are...
O
n November 30, 1998, The New Yorker ran a
remarkable and caution-ary feature by journal
ist Douglas Preston on Chaco Canyon, New
Mexico, and that most mysterious civilization, the Anasazi.
Chaco, with its magnificent stone Great Houses, was the
hub of a huge civilization spreading over 50,000 square miles,
a civilization that ended right after lunch, circa 1150 A.D.,
without anybody cleaning the pots. Afterward, their legend
grew and grew, until their civilization became a parable of
Utopia. They were said to be a profoundly spiritual people
who lived in harmony with nature; a people without rich or
poor or even a ruling class, who governed by consensus. In
1987, Chaco Canyon was a Mecca for that great hand-holding called the Harmonic Convergence and at least one
archaeological site has since been closed because so many
people buried crystals or had their ashes spread there. One
extreme of the story claimed that these “highly evolved beings” left the earth in space ships.
But, as Preston detailed, the Utopian tale of the Anasazi
ignored one gnawing problem: piles of human bones that
looked to archaeologists like “food trash.” Bones with polished ends from being stirred in a pot and then cracked open
for marrow. Bones representing thousands of people over
hundreds of years. In case there was any doubt about what
happened to these boiled and shattered bones, archaeologists found human feces deposited upon the stone hearth of
the family that apparently became the dinner, and the feces
in turn contained the remnants of human flesh. In other
words, the Anasazi were not an evolved society at all. Their
leaders ate those who disagreed with them.
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S pirituality
&
H e a lt h
1
Beige
Thinking: Instinctive. Concerned about food, water, and
procreation.
Politics: Clans who fight to
keep place in the survival
niche.
2
4
Blue
Thinking: Authority. Concerned
with discipline, traditions, and
rules. Lives for later.
Politics: Nations that fight to
protect boarders, homelands,
hearth, preserve way of life, defend “holy” cause.
Purple:
Thinking: Animistic. Concerned
about rites, rituals, taboos.
Politics: Tribes who fight to protect
the myths, ancestral traditions.
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3
Red
Thinking: Egocentric.
Concerned with
gratification, glitz.
Politics: Feudal who fight
to dominate and plunder.
Ouch! Why repeat this brutal story here?
Well, one simple reason is to reinforce a point that
historians and archaeologists and anthropologists have
been making for years: Utopia, so far as science tells
us, is not behind us. Modern societies are far from
perfect, but they tend to be evolving for the better.
The second and more complex reason for this
jolting tale is that thxose of us struggling along on
our spiritual journeys — especially the roughly 24%
of the American population identified as the Cultural Creatives — of which you, dear reader, are
likely a charter member — often find ourselves attempting to embrace everything and everyone
equally. Not wanting to oppress anyone, we want
to deny that certain ways of being in the world are
higher or lower. In our fight against oppressive hierarchies, we have a tendency to embrace romantic
myths like the Anasazi. What we often don’t understand — and what has now been demonstrated in
psychological studies involving ten of thousands of
people worldwide — is that the point where we try
to deny that hierarchies exist turns out to be a fairly
distinct stage in a larger “hierarchy of consciousness” — and it’s not the top.
One Brief History of Higher Consciousness
The idea of evolving levels or a hierarchy of consciousness is nothing new. Back in the sixties,
psychologist Abraham Maslow identified a progression in consciousness from A-values (survival needs
like food and sex and shelter) to B-values (“higher
grumbles” like choosing a career). Meanwhile, the
late Clare Graves at Union College in New York
was figuring out more specifically what these stages
6
Green
Thinking: Consensus. Concerned about equality,
feelings, authenticity, sharing, and caring.
Politics: Value communities who fight to punish
those who commit “crimes against humanity”
and protect the victims.
5
Orange
Thinking: Strategic. Concerned about
material success, status, and growth
Politics: Corporate States who fight to
extend economic spheres for access to
raw materials and markets.
7
Yellow
Thinking: Integrative. Concerned
about natural systems, multiple
realities, knowledge.
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8
Turquoise
Thinking: Holistic. Concerned
with collective individualism,
cosmic spirituality, earth
changes.
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PHOTO: ROBERT HANSEN-STURM/STORM PHOTO
A HIERARCHY
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Utopia, so far as
science tells us,
is not behind us.
Modern societies
are far from
perfect, but they
tend to be
evolving for the
better.
53
of human consciousness might be — and
how they might become useful for creating
a more peaceful world. In studies involving thousands of people, what Graves found
were not so much discrete stages of consciousness but “a spiraling process marked
by progressive subordination of older,
lower-order behavior to newer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems
change.” In other words, Graves found that
each level of consciousness remains within
us even as we progress up and up.
Next, Don Beck, Ph.D., and Christopher
Cowan expanded Graves’s description of
spiraling consciousness into the colors of
Spiral Dynamics. As Dr. Beck explains, the
spirals nest together like Russian dolls: We
don’t leave one stage for another; instead,
each new spiral envelops all those levels that
were already there. The worldviews at each
layer are “nested truths.” In other words, the
worldview is the way the world looks at that
level — which is why communication between levels is so nearly impossible. People
at different levels are reacting to very different realities.
While the colors take some getting used
to, they have been shown to be very helpful,
especially in racially charged conflicts like
those in South Africa. Using the language of
Spiral Dynamics, a situation is no longer black
vs. white but blue vs. purple or orange vs.
green. More importantly, the focus is no
longer on types of people (which don’t
change) but types in people (which can and
do change.) Beck made more than 60 trips
to South Africa and was commended by both
Nelson Mandela and Zulu leader
Mongosutho Buthelezi.
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S pirituality
&
H e a lt h
The World as a Kaleidoscope
Don Beck explains that Third-World societies are dealing, for the most part, with
lower levels — beige, purple, and red. Staying alive, finding safety and dealing with
feudal-age conditions matter most. SecondWorld societies are characterized by
authoritarian (blue), one-party states,
whether from the right or from the left.
First-World nations are centered in orange,
a free-market-driven and individual-liberty
focused worldview. Green, yellow, and turquoise are emerging in the “post-modern”
age, but we have no traditional language
beyond First World.
But, as Beck reminds us, there are systems within systems within systems. “So
many of the same issues we confront on the
West Bank (red to blue) can be found in
South Central Los Angeles. One can experience the animistic (purple) worldview on
Bourbon Street as well as in the Republic of
Congo. Matters brought before the city
council in Minneapolis (orange to green to
yellow) are not unlike the debates in front
of governing bodies in the Netherlands.”
The possibilities for using the colors are
many and varied — and there are several
books dreaming up more, notably Ken
Wilber’s latest, A Theory of Everything
(Shambala, 2000). But the main point to
remember here is that the vast majority of
the world’s people are ethnocentric: Only
about 10% has reached the multicultural
green stage of the Cultural Creatives. For
the rest to reach that level they will have to
progress step by step from purple to red to
blue to orange. Unfortunately, the egalitarian greens, who tend to see all hierarchies as
oppressive, have a tendency to destroy blue.
Greens think ridding the world of blue
will naturally raise people, but what it often
does instead is drop them into red and
purple. In South Africa, for example, apartheid was built on a blue foundation on which
white South Africans had built a strong, orange capitalist state. When apartheid was
dismantled, the country was thrown into turSpiral_ed3_LO9_FP[3] 12.28.00
moil. Of course apartheid needed to go, but
this dynamic helps to explain that the people
of South Africa need time to create their own
blue order to replace the European version.
By the same token, authoritarian blue countries like Singapore may appall greens, but
the blue order there contains a hot ethnic
purple and red core. Abruptly knocking out
the blue would unleash chaos. Instead, what
needs to happen is to build individual autonomy and achievement, and move the
blues up to orange.
The good news is that when we leap upward from green to yellow — as Ken Wilber
is convinced the Cultural Creatives are
poised to do — we become conscious of all
the steps of the ladder that got us to this
very privileged position. More importantly,
we can better support the steps of other
people and countries coming up behind us.
It is easy to forget how fortunate we are and
to lose sight of the real work ahead by clinging to dreams like the Anasazi — but, if we’re
lucky, somewhere along the journey, reality
bites and we are forced to move up.
For updates on Spiral Dynamics see
Spiraldynamics.com ❖
And Where Are You Hanging Out?
My World is
A. a natural milieu where humans rely on
instinct to stay alive
B. a magical place alive with spirit beings
and mystical signs
C. a jungle where the strongest and most
cunning survive
D. an ordered existence under the control
of the ultimate truth
E. a marketplace full of possibilities and
opportunities
F. a human habitat in which we share life’s
experiences
G. a chaotic organism forged by differences and change
H. An elegantly balanced system of interlocking forces.
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